Dimensity 9500 Debuts Arm C1 Cores and Dual-NPU

MediaTek's Dimensity 9500, built on TSMC's N3P, features an all big core CPU, advanced GPU, and 100 TOPS AI capabilities, leading in performance benchmarks.

MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500 is the company’s first flagship SoC to adopt Arm’s latest CPU and GPU cores from the Lumex CSS platform. Built on TSMC’s N3P process and packing 30 billion transistors, it features a third-generation “all big core” CPU cluster with one C1-Ultra, three C1-Premium, and four C1-Pro cores. The C1-Ultra reaches 4.21 GHz, surpassing the 4 GHz threshold for the first time in a MediaTek chip and narrowing the single-thread gap with Apple, while Qualcomm maintains a multicore lead. Graphics performance improves with the new 12-core Mali G1-Ultra GPU, giving MediaTek a clear edge over both Apple and Qualcomm. AI capabilities scale to 100 TOPS through an updated NPU 990, a new low-power compute-in-memory (CIM) NPU, and SME2 acceleration within the CPU cluster for efficient on-CPU inference, positioning Dimensity 9500 as the current leader in AI benchmarks.